The Society of Cable and Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) is creating standards to define a method for seamlessly splicing different segments of digital content into a stream of digital data such as a broadcast program stream (e.g., a Digital Program Insertion standard (DPI)). These standards may enable a media provider (e.g., a television, radio, or Internet provider) to personalize and/or customize programming according to a consumer's tastes and preferences based on demographic data and the consumer's choices. For example, a digital bit stream containing television data may be received at a set top box (STB) or other receiving device at an end user's location and may contain digital indicators and/or cues to indicate a splicing point (e.g., a point in the program where digital content may be spliced). The STB may analyze the viewer's interests and/or demographic data and splice into the digital bit stream an appropriate advertisement and/or some other programming (e.g., special interest shows and/or informative messages) previously stored in the STB or received by the STB via a second digital bit stream. In other examples, the locally inserted content is not tied to the preferences of a particular end user, but is instead inserted for universal broadcast, for broadcast in a limited geographical area, etc.
This potential splicing activity presents a special challenge to audience measurement. (As used herein, audience measurement includes audience size and/or demographic measurement, content verification, commercial verification, program lineup verification, and content tracking for any type of media (e.g., television (digital, analog, cable, VOD, and/or satellite), radio, Internet, etc.)). Traditional content identification methods may not be sufficient to monitor such splicing activities. For example, a traditional method for television audience measurement monitors a television tuning status for channel identification and uses verified “as-run” logs (e.g., lists of television programs correlated with the television channels on which the television programs were broadcast and the times at which the television programs were broadcast) from networks and/or other programming sources to determine the identity of the television programming viewed. This method assumes that the viewed media content has not been altered, either before or during distribution because, if such alterations were to occur, the program logs may no longer accurately reflect the actual content that was received, displayed and viewed at a home.
More specifically, the use of splicing as defined in standards such as the DPI standard may allow television programming to be customized at a cable head-end, at the end user's location, or elsewhere in the distribution chain. As a result of such customization, the “as-run” logs may become inaccurate. Specifically, because the “as-run” logs are not designed to reflect the customization provided by local program insertion, the “as-run” logs may not accurately correlate program data and/or channel/time cross references and, thus, the “as-run” logs cannot be relied upon to accurately identify the media content consumed at an end user's location.